Morning light filtered through the paper screens of the guest pavilion, casting cool grey shadows across the floorboards.
Rulan sat by the tea table in a fresh set of pale lavender silks, quietly observing the courtyard through a gap in the wooden lattice.
Her initial plan to slip away at dawn and find Master Lu Zhen’s medicinal garden had hit an immediate, undeniable wall.
General Meng had sealed every obvious route with almost irritating efficiency.
Four armored Imperial Guards stood posted at the primary arched gateway, two held the side service passage, and sentries paced the outer stone wall every twenty steps.
Stealth in her current physical state was out of the question.
Evasion required speed, low visibility, and high agility—none of which applied to a broad, grandly dressed imperial princess trapped inside a double-guarded square.
‘Fine’, Rulan thought, taking a slow sip of warm water.
‘If I can’t slip past the perimeter, I’ll make the perimeter move with me.’
By mid-morning, the White Cloud Temple had opened its central halls for the scheduled seasonal prayer ceremony.
Despite the failed assassination attempt twenty-four hours prior, the temple could not simply cancel the proceedings; the capital’s most powerful noble families, wealthy merchant patriarchs, and senior matriarchs were in attendance, and canceling the event would signal panic to the entire court.
Rulan walked into the grand prayer hall flanked by Lian’er and four palace attendants.
The atmosphere inside the vast, pillar-lined hall was thick with burning incense and heavy, unspoken tension.
The assassination attempt hanging over the mountain had transformed the social dynamic.
Nobles gathered in tight, whispering clusters, their eyes constantly flicking toward the entrance arches every time a heavy set of boots echoed against the flagstones.
As Rulan glided past the carved brass cauldrons, she watched the reactions of the surrounding court with detached amusement.
Several low-ranking noblewomen approached her with exaggerated, saccharine smiles, offering low, sweeping bows and overly enthusiastic inquiries about her health.
They were fishing for imperial favor, hoping her brother’s fondness for her might translate into administrative patronage for their families.
Others kept their distance, eyeing her with open, poorly concealed disdain.
To the traditional high-born elite, Rulan remained the arrogant, spoiled Fourth Princess whose reckless tantrums were a constant blot on court decorum.
Rulan ignored them all with equal indifference.
In her past life, she had dealt with factional leaders, warlords, and desperate survivors.
Compared to them, the petty social games of court were hardly worth a second thought.
The ceremony itself proceeded without incident.
Monks chanted rhythmic scriptures, bronze bells chimed across the mountain valley, and aristocrats bowed before the golden altars.
Yet beneath the pious music, everyone was on edge.
Even the ministers pretending to be absorbed in prayer kept checking the positions of General Meng’s armored guards posted along the hall’s perimeter.
The moment the final incense sticks burned down and the noble families began filtering out toward the reception pavilions, Rulan made her move.
She stepped out onto the wide stone terrace and turned directly toward the squad of Guards waiting nearby.
“I am going for a walk,” Rulan announced smoothly, adjusting her sleeves.
“The air in that prayer hall was suffocating.”
The senior guard officer stepped forward, offering a rigid, polite bow.
“Your Highness, General Meng has issued strict commands. The inner grounds are under security lockdown following yesterday’s breach. Your Highness must remain within the assigned guest quarters.” Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
Rulan tilted her head, her eyes locking onto the officer with a cold, unyielding intensity.
“Are you forbidding me from breathing mountain air, Officer?” Rulan asked, her voice dropping into a low, quiet register that carried an unmistakable weight of authority.
“I am an Imperial Princess of Great Liang. His Majesty granted me permission to visit this mountain for my health, not to be imprisoned in a guest room by his guards.”
The officer’s jaw tightened.
“Your Highness, we are merely executing General Meng’s security orders for your own protection—”
“General Meng answers to His Majesty,” Rulan interrupted flatly.
“His Majesty sent me here to pray and recover in peace. Surely he did not intend for me to spend five days staring at the same four walls.”
The officer hesitated.
Rulan raised one brow.
“I am asking to walk in the temple grounds, not to disappear into the mountains.”
“Your Highness, General Meng’s orders—”
“Then let him know I wished to take some fresh air,” Rulan said calmly.
“If he still wishes to keep me inside after that, I will listen to him when he tells me himself.”
The guard officer hesitated, caught in the classic trap of military command versus imperial authority.
He looked at her calm, utterly unbothered posture, then glanced at his three subordinate guards.
“Your Highness may walk,” the officer conceded finally, bowing low.
“However… my men and I must escort you at all times. No exceptions.”
Rulan let out a small, dramatic sigh of mild annoyance, playing her role to perfection.
“If I must be followed by four clanking suits of armor just to look at pine trees, so be it.”
Internally, Rulan smiled, that was all she needed.
Rulan set off along the manicured stone walkways, deliberately leading her armored escort on a long, winding, illogical route.
She didn’t head directly toward the eastern woods.
Instead, she wandered casually through the central lotus gardens, paused to stare idly at carved wooden pavilion eaves, and stopped for three full minutes near an ancient stone lantern as if deeply fascinated by the moss growing on its base.
The four guards fell into a quiet, routine rhythm behind her.
Her slow, aimless pacing convinced them that she was simply a bored, spoiled princess indulging a foolish whim to pass the time.
Their vigilance gradually settled into the dull rhythm of escort duty.
Slowly, methodically, Rulan adjusted her trajectory.
Each turn she took subtly veered toward the quieter, eastern perimeter of the temple grounds.
The polished flagstones gradually gave way to rougher stone pavers, and the grand red-tiled pavilions thinned out into dense, overgrown groves of cypress and bamboo.
The chatter of visiting nobles faded entirely, replaced by the cool mountain breeze rustling through the trees.
To them, she was still taking her leisurely, aimless stroll.
As the path curved around a high granite outcrop, through the thin bamboo stalks ahead lay the secluded slope leading up to the cliffside.
And right there, nestled in a quiet clearing surrounded by raised wooden beds of drying roots and green shoots, was Master Lu Zhen’s medicinal garden.
The old physician was standing near a low wooden table, dressed in his simple grey cotton tunic.
He was sorting dried herbs into small paper packets with calm, methodical efficiency, apparently unaware that an imperial procession was slowly making its way toward his quiet garden.
Rulan’s eyes narrowed slightly as she took in the scene.
‘There he is.’
However, she immediately hit the final problem.
If she simply walked straight into the garden and began a detailed, hushed conversation with an unknown individual, her escorts would instantly become suspicious.
They would ask who the old physician was, why she had come here, and what business she had with him.
Before long, General Meng or someone from the palace would know about Lu Zhen, and the quiet little arrangement Rulan had discovered would be ruined before it even began.
She needed a legitimate, completely unsuspicious reason to interact with him on the spot.
Rulan evaluated her options.
She could simply walk into the garden and pretend she had taken the wrong path, but four Imperial Guards were not likely to accept such an explanation without questions.
Once they started asking who Lu Zhen was, her carefully hidden physician would no longer be hidden.
Her gaze dropped to the uneven ground ahead.
There was a thick cypress root pushing through the dirt.
Rulan looked at it for a moment, then she looked at the guards behind her.
A perfectly reasonable accident.
She took another step, her foot caught the root.
“Ah—!”
Her balance vanished beneath her, and she dropped heavily onto the dirt, skirts spreading around her.
“Your Highness!”
The guards rushed forward in alarm.
Rulan clutched her ankle, keeping her face twisted into what she hoped was a convincing expression of pain.
Across the clearing, Lu Zhen had stopped sorting herbs.
The old physician stared at her.
Rulan stared back.
Perfect.